Custom soft plastic lure creation

[bhoff]

I realize that this may take quite a bit of effort so I want to see if anyone has done this on the forum. I'm wanting to know what would be the rough steps you would need to go through from idea to product if you wanted to make a custom soft plastic. I have thought of a few possible routes, designing something in a modeling software such as autocad or fusion 360 and sending it off to a company that does custom CNC machining to have it made or modeling it by hand in something and making a cast. Either way, does anyone know what would be the best way of going about this or is this just not really all that feasible. Thanks.

[Fishstalker001]

I've been looking into this as well. Look into Alumilite products. They seem to have everything you would need and there's some youtube video's on the subjects as well

[BassNJake]

What's your end goal with this bait?

 

I go through an outrageous amount of toads in a season.

To off set the costs, I save my used plastics and repour them into some molds I made with Durhams water putty.

Since I like the Keitech Noisy flapper, I made some molds of those exact baits.

 

I then created some frankenstein type baits by melting different legs onto the Keitech body.

I have been working on a keitech body and the legs from a ribbit almost all summer.

However, I have not achieved the desired outcome after many attempts.

 

I did make a shakeyhead and neko rig bait that has worked very good.

It's a combo of part of a tube and a 6 inch finesse worm.

Since the tube part pours solid, no need for additional weight which helps dragging it around the rocks.

 

Nothing I would try to sell or make money off of.

It is extremely rewarding to catch something on one of your creations though.

 

[bhoff]

I don't necessarily have an outright end goal for this type of project, it would most likely just be a hobby. I enjoy tinkering and so I feel as if I could maybe design something from scratch that would be able to do well on the water. Maybe after a while I could start giving them to friends and see where it goes from there. So you said that you poured a mould for a bait using putty? I guess I could look into that.